The top 10 deals reflect 25 megawatts of leasing in Santa Clara, Calif.,  and almost 14 megawatts of space leased in Elk Grove Village, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. Only two deals outside of those markets made the list: Twitter’s 8 megawatt lease in Atlanta, and a 2.275 megawatt deal by Salesforce.com in Ashburn, Va.

Kerrigan also noted that it’s getting cheaper to develop wholesale data center space. “Wholesale speculative construction costs are down between 15-20 percent due to economies of scale and off-site modular construction,” he writes.

The roundup also provides data on the largest build-to-suit projects this year, and the largest available blocks of wholesale space.  Check out the full writeup at the Grubb & Ellis data center blog.

The Terremark NAP West data center in Santa Clara, Calif.

Santa Clara, Calif. continues to be a hotbed of data center activity. Today Terremark said it has completed an expansion of its Network Access Point (NAP) West data center in Santa Clara, which now features 100,000 square feet of raised floor space. Terremark, a Verizon company, said the expansion in Silicon Valley was driven by strong customer demand for enterprise-class IT services.

The project brings additional colocation capacity online in Santa Clara, which has seen a burst of data center construction this year. Data centers are attracted to Santa Clara by the price of electricity from municipal utility Silicon Valley Power, which is slightly less than pricing for PG&E in surrounding towns in Silicon Valley. Terremark is one of many data center providers bringing new space online, joining Digital Realty Trust, DuPont Fabros, CoreSite, Vantage Data Centers, QTS and Server Farm Realty.

“As a major interconnection point for the world and of the technology industry, the Silicon Valley area has long been a location of strategic importance for Terremark,” said Kerry Bailey, president of Terremark. “Through the expansion of the NAP West, we continue to invest in the strategic global hubs that support the requirements of our expanding global customer base.”

Terremark was acquired by Verizon earlier this year in a $1.4 billion deal . It recently opened the NAP of Amsterdam, the flagship hosting facility for Verizon/Terremark’s European cloud operations, and expanded the NAP do Brasil in Sao Paulo.

Terremark said the expansion of the NAP West was designed to meet the demands for data-intensive colocation and cloud hosting space in Silicon Valley.

“Our newly expanded data center campus meets the needs of power, space and bandwidth-intensive applications we are seeing in today’s market,” said Hector Hernandez, senior vice president of data center operations for Terremark. “We designed and built NAP West to meet our high security standards with added redundancy to maintain our customer’s mission-critical applications around the clock.”

nlyte selected by Computacenter. nlyte Software announced that IT infrastructure services provider Computacenter has extended the use of nlyte Software’s DCIM suite to support its new C3 cloud initiative, which offers organisations the ability to adopt the cloud using an optimal blend of onsite and offsite IT delivery models. After an extensive product comparison Computacenter chose nlyte due to its ease of use, ease of deployment, and ease of integration with existing applications, as well as its impactful visual representation and flexibility. “The nlyte suite provides time and energy savings that allow us to offer our customers highly competitive managed data services,” said Simon Brickett, head of data center services at Computacenter. “We have slashed audit timescales from three weeks to less than one, by automatically planning and scheduling maintenance across Computacenter’s data centre landscape. We are also minimizing our customers’ data centre energy usage and carbon footprint with tailor-made services that meet their exact requirements. This will become even more important when organisations start paying their share of the UK Government’s Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficient Scheme (CRC EES) carbon tax bill in 2012.”

CoreLink selected by Ivytalk. CoreLink Data Centers announced an agreement to support Ivycorp’s suite of business messaging services and technology from its nearby Seattle data center and a geographically diverse Las Vegas data center for resiliency. Ivycorp has turned to CoreLink to further ensure it delivers the high service levels it provides to clients, which depend on Ivycorp’s communication tools for timely and reliable delivery of crucial business-related messages and data. “CoreLink’s relentless commitment to service and security, along with their well-defined customer support, were major factors in our selection to data center hosting and managed services for our company,” said Mary Jesse, Ivycorp’s founder and CEO.

Oracle acquires InQuira.  Oracle (ORCL) announced that they have entered into an agreement to acquire InQuira, a leading provider of best-in-class service knowledge management software that supports web self-service and agent-assisted service. Privately-held InQuira is based in the San Francisco Bay area and will further extend Oracle’s CRM product with web self-service, customer communities and knowledge management capabilities. After the acquisition is completed InQuira employees will join Oracle and the solution will enhance Oracle’s Siebel CRM and Oracle Fusion CRM Service products. “The acquisition of InQuira provides Oracle with a complete knowledge management suite, integrated with self-service support, online customer forums and agent-assisted CRM,” said Anthony Lye, SVP of Oracle CRM. “We expect InQuira to be the centerpiece for Oracle Fusion CRM Service. With InQuira, Oracle will provide an integrated suite of proven solutions that deliver a comprehensive and highly personalized experience for every customer, across all channels.”

Fusion-io unleashes I/O for STATISTICA.  Fusion-io (FIO) announced that StatSoft, provider of a comprehensive array of data analysis, data management, data visualization and data mining technologies, recently tested Fusion’s ioMemory platform with its flagship STATISTICA software, comparing Fusion ioDrives to disk-based storage components. StatSoft achieved 300 and 500 percent data performance and latency reduction improvements when compared to legacy disk-based storage. “Our global client base shares a common need for the fastest possible data access in order to perform analyses that drive business-critical decisions,” said George Butler, Vice President, Platform Development, StatSoft. “STATISTICA is already among the fastest data analysis software tools on the market. With the Fusion-io memory platform, STATISTICA customers can analyze information from even the largest data sets more quickly than ever before through a solution that greatly improves the efficiency of their current infrastructure.” To view complete StatSoft results, read their white paper “STATISTICA Performance with Fusion-io ioDrive.”

The exterior of the Server Farm Realty data center in Santa Clara, Calif.

In international markets, the Red Sea Group is known primarily as a developer of upscale hotels and residential developments. In the U.S. , the company has focused on an entirely different type of tenant: racks and racks of servers. Red Sea, an investment group based in Israel, is expanding its ambitions in the U.S. market with Server Farm Realty, a subsidiary formed last year to pursue data center projects.

The company is developing new facilities in three markets, and also owns several data centers that are fully leased to a large telecom company. CEO Avner Papouchado has been buying and selling data centers since 1999, taking a few years off after the dot-com bust.

Papouchado said Server Farm Realty’s approach focuses on customizing the right design for each project. “We design each building for where it is and what the market needs,” he said.

Different Approaches in Three Markets

That has led to slightly different approaches in each of the three markets where Server Farm Realty is building speculative wholesale data center space. Its first project to hit the market will be a 27,000 square foot building in Santa Clara, Calif., supported by 3 megawatts of critical power, which will begin accepting customers in April.

In May the company will complete the first 10,000 square feet of space in the Titan Building in Moses Lake, Washington. It’s a unique property that once housed an Air Force Command and Control facility. “It was built to withstand a 10 megaton bomb within a quarter-mile,” said Papouchado.

Late last year Red Sea Group purchased the former Northern Trust building at 840 South Canal street in Chicago, and plans to spend $200 million to convert it into a data center. At more than 400,000 square feet, the Chicago property is substantially larger than Server Farm Realty’s other projects.

Santa Clara Project

First up is Santa Clara, where the company will offer 13,000 square feet of finished technical space. “While Silicon Valley is home for most of the data centers in the world, there remains a high level of unmet demand,” said Papouchado. “By offering LEED Silver certification and top-of-the-line energy efficiency, our data center delivers a level of reliability, sustainability and cost-savings that hasn’t been readily available.”

In Santa Clara, Server Farm Realty is using a fire suppression system known as Hi-Fog, a fine water misting system designed to prevent extensive damage in the case of a fire. Robert Glavan, vice president of data center operations, said the system is new to the United States.

“It uses 90 percent less water, penetrates to the seat of the fire faster, causes the fire to burn at lower temperatures and eliminates cross-lineup water contamination,” said Glavan. “The result is another layer of protection to our client’s data.”

Papouchado refers to the site at 5101 Lafayette Street as a “bite-sized” building. The project is coming online at a time when multiple data center developers have active construction projects in Santa Clara. Digital Realty Trust, DuPont Fabros, Terremark, QTS and Vantage Data Centers have all had data center space under development.

But Papouchado isn’t concerned about supply. “I definitely think there’s enough demand in the market,” he said. “I think people are building carefully.”

The Digital Realty Trust (365 Main) data center in San Francisco.

Cloud infrastructure provider GoGrid will expand its data center footprint with a new installation at the 365 Main Street facility in San Francisco, the company said today. The move marks the third data center expansion in six months for GoGrid, which will take “a significant amount of data center space” at the Digital Realty Trust building, which is adjacent to GoGrid’s headquarters.

The new facility allows GoGrid to meet increasing demand for its cloud solutions and also deploy new services and management tools, the company said. The agreement between GoGrid and Digital Realty includes the construction of a building of a new private fiber conduit linking GoGrid’s infrastructure in the two adjacent buildings.

Strong Growth Drives Expansion

“With triple-digit growth from GoGrid cloud services the additional data center capacity provided by Digital Realty Trust will allow GoGrid to meet our customers’ needs head on – ensuring that we remain ahead of our skyrocketing growth curve,” said Mark Worsey, Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President of Technology at GoGrid. “The 365 Main Street data center provides us with an ideal location to expand our presence as part of our global rollout.”

GoGrid currently operates a data center in San Francisco, CA. In February 2011, GoGrid announced the opening of a European data center and in June 2010, GoGrid announced expansion into an Equinix, Inc. data center located in Ashburn, VA.

“While the supply of quality data center space is very limited in downtown San Francisco, 365 Main Street offers highly flexible space to support data center expansions for companies like GoGrid that are growing rapidly,” said Joe Goldsmith, Vice President of Sales at Digital Realty Trust. “We look forward to being a long-term data center partner of GoGrid.”

GoGrid currently operates a data center in San Francisco. In February 2011, GoGrid announced the opening of a European data center and in June 2010, GoGrid announced expansion into an Equinix, Inc. data center located in Ashburn, VA.

Digital Realty Trust bought the 365 Main Street San Francisco property as part of its $725 million acquisition of the 365 Main portfolio of data centers.

Jim Trout, the CEO of Vantage Data Centers, with the new data center his company has just completed in Santa Clara.

The newest player in the Silicon Valley data center market is moving quickly. Vantage Data Centers announced today that it has completed construction on its first data center in Santa Clara, Calif. and has already leased wholesale data center space to leading Internet and semiconductor companies based in Silicon Valley.

The new facility is opening less than nine months after Vantage came out of stealth mode with backing from Silver Lake Partners, a leading technology investment firm. It’s the first of three data centers Vantage plans to bring online during 2011 on its $300 million Santa Clara campus on Walsh Avenue, where it has 37 megawatts of power capacity.

The 61,192 square foot facility features 40,000 square feet of data center space on a 30-inch raised floor, and is supported by 6 megawatts of provisioned power from Silicon Valley Power. Vantage says it expects its data centers to operate at a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.20 when using fresh air economization to cool servers, and a PUE of  1.29 when using chillers.

Aligning Facilities With Business, Environment

“The Santa Clara project is a showcase for the industry on how data centers can be more aligned with businesses interests and environmental stewardship,” said Jim Trout, Vantage Data Center’s CEO. “Vantage’s long-term goal is to deliver new levels of efficiency and scalability at every completed campus. Our ability to deliver the lowest energy rates, combined with our scale and flexibility, will translate into significant potential cost savings for our customers.”

Trout has lengthy experience in the wholesale data center space, first as president of CRG West (now CoreSite) and TeraSpace Networks and then as Senior VP of Portfolio and Technical operations at Digital Realty Trust.

Last week Vantage filled out its executive team by announcing the appointments of two more industry veterans. Greg Ness joins Vantage as vice president of marketing, while Tony Giampolo is the company’s new director of operations. Ness previously held a similar post at cloud computing specialist Infoblox, and has served in various corporate marketing roles at Juniper Networks and Redline Networks. Giampolo recently served as senior manager, global data center operations for NetApp, where he was responsible for global data centers and enterprise monitoring program.

Leasing Reflects Ongoing Demand

Vantage didn’t disclose the details of its leasing, but having tenants lined up as it opens its first facility suggests that demand for wholesale data center space remains strong in Silicon Valley. The wholesale model, in which developers lease finished “plug-n-play” data center space, has proven popular with companies seeking to conserve capital during the credit crunch.

Other players in the wholesale space include Digital Realty Trust (DLR), Coresite and DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT), who are all currently building new data center space in Santa Clara.

Vantage sees the power capacity of its campus as a key selling point, as it offers tenants the ability to quickly scale their data center operations as they grow. The Santa Clara site has a dedicated, on-site electrical substation with a dual-fed 50 MW capacity.

That offers headroom for Internet companies experiencing hyper-growth, a key constituency for wholesale providers. But Vantage sees potential in the enterprise market, where many companies will find their existing data centers facing obsolescence in the face of the power and cooling demands of higher-density workloads.

With that in mind, Vantage has included corporate amenities in its data centers, which it describes as “highly functional facilities for conducting business” in a comfortable Class A office-like setting. The company believes this will be a selling point for companies transitioning from in-house data center space to third-party facilities.

A closer look at the exterior of the new Vantage Data Centers' facility in Santa Clara, Calif.

This new type of facility will soon get a test-drive in Silicon Valley. In the next several weeks Pelio & Associates will install three container data centers in a facility on Space Park Drive in Santa Clara, Calif. Pelio hopes to fill the 24,000 square foot building with up to 23 containers for customers seeking to rapidly deploy capacity.

Pelio has developed a number of data centers in Santa Clara, and partnered with its Digital Realty Trust on several more. Les Pelio, the founder of Pelio & Associates, believes the market is ready for something new and different.

Focusing on Speed to Market
“We’re really focused on speed-to-market and lower cost,” said Pelio. “This really brings the concept together. As a developer, it allows for strategic deployment of capital.”

A container center requires less infrastructure than a traditional wholesale data center. Pelio says the facility will provide space, power, connectivity and chilled water for cooling through docking stations around the perimeter of the container area.

Testing the Water With Container Centers
A number of colocation and wholesale data center specialists have offered space for container modules, most notable i/o Data Centers, which has designed the entire second phase of its huge i/o Phoenix data center around its new modular offering. CoreSite also has announced initiatives to house containers for customers of HP.

A startup called Dock IT has been marketing container hosting sites in Virginia in Gainesville and Ashburn for about a year, but has not yet finalized any tenants, according to chief operating office Frank Piatkowski.

The container center concept is moving ahead in Europe, where Colt and CapGemini have developed data center designs around modular deployments.

Pelio says his 24,000 square foot Santa Clara building will provide both security and flexibility. The faiclity will have access security systems much like a traditional data center, which then provide access to the container bay. The open area can hold up to 23 containers of different sizes. Pelio notes that modular units range from 20 feet up to 53 feet in length.

Flexible Designs
“We really believe the layout for these type of facilities is going to morph,” Pelio said, noting that new modular designs are emerging. “We’re really about providing floor space in a well-located facility. (The type of module) doesn’t make a difference to us. Instead of me telling you what we have, you can tell us what you need.”

Santa Clara is the data center capital of Silicon Valley because the local power company, Silicon Valley Power, offers slightly lower rates than those available from PG&E in surrounding towns. Pelio’s building is located next to a Silicon Valley Power substation, and adjacent to Digital Realty Trust’s growing Santa Clara campus.

Digital Realty, DuPont Fabros Technology, CoreSite, Terremark, Vantage Data Centers and QTS are all building new data center space in Santa Clara. The construction projects are expected to create more than 500,000 square feet of new data center space.

The exterior of the Server Farm Realty facility in Moses Lake, Washington.

Real estate firm Red Sea Group (RSG) has launched Server Farm Realty, a data center development company with projects in Washington state and Silicon Valley.  The company will be led by president and chief executive officer Avner Papouchado, who brings nearly 20 years of real estate development experience as North American CEO for Red Sea Group.

The company is currently building speculative wholesale data center space, as well as building custom solutions.

“With the global demand for data centers growing, we’re filling the need for cutting edge facilities that not only maintain the utmost reliability and security, they limit energy costs and therefore carbon emissions,” said Papouchado. “With the backing of Red Sea’s extensive building experience, we’ve been able to assemble a team of highly experienced, well known data center experts to drive us forward. In fact, we are currently developing cutting edge data centers that will be available for occupancy as early as April 2011.”

Server Farm Realty is currently developing two data centers. One is located in Moses Lake, Washington, where 10,000 square feet of space and 2 megawatts of power will be ready in May 2011. The second is in Santa Clara, Calif. where 13,750 square feet of space will be ready in April 2011.

Server Farm Realty says the Moses Lake facility will feature an energy-efficient design using a combination of direct/indirect evaporative cooling and free cooling.

“When building data centers, Server Farm Realty is obsessed with energy efficiency, high reliability and fiber connectivity,” said Robert Glavan, vice president of data center operations. “We offer full flexibility in our data center design, build, leasing options and operations options. We are focused on specific markets which provide the lowest power cost, extremely low latency fiber connectivity and locations with significant wholesale data center requirements. We have chosen prime locations where power is renewable, abundant and inexpensive and diverse low latency fiber is available.”

A look at some of the power and cooling infrastructure supporting the Fortune Data Centers facility in San Jose, California.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Fortune Data Centers has received approval from Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) to transfer to Direct Access (DA) power service, a move that will give customers access to cheaper and greener power, the company said today. The Direct Access program allows eligible PG&E customers to competitively source electricity directly from other energy suppliers.

Fortune also announced plans to expand Phase 1 of its data center in San Jose, Calif., adding 1.4 megawatts of critical IT load to the existing 8 MW, bringing the total capacity of the facility to 9.4 megawatts. The additional capacity is expected to be fully commissioned by year end and available in early 2011.

More Power Choices for Customers
Fortune CEO John Sheputis says he believes the company’s San Jose facility is the first multi-tenant data center in California to offer Direct Access to tenants. He said Fortune will pass all power cost savings on to customers.

“Giving businesses and consumers the freedom to choose their energy service providers can lead to better outcomes, such as lower power rates and greater use of renewable energy sources,” said Sheputis. “Offering Direct Access is not only a benefit to our tenants – it’s a win for Fortune as it further distinguishes our facility from competing data centers in Silicon Valley and California.”

Power pricing is of particular interest in Silicon Valley, where much of the data center inventory focuses on Santa Clara, where municipal utility Silicon Valley Power has historically had slightly lower power pricing than surrounding towns served by PG&E.

New Law Allows Commercial Access
Fortune received acceptance for Direct Access through a new law providing for limited reopening of Direct Access to non-residential customers. Under Direct Access, eligible utility customers can choose from multiple energy suppliers.

Sheputis estimated Fortune’s tenants could save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on energy costs, or opt for renewable energy to further reduce carbon emissions.

Fortune’s expansion comes amid a building boom in Silicon Valley, as DuPont Fabros Technology, Digital Realty Trust, Vantage Data Centers and CoreSite are all building new space in Santa Clara. Analysts who track the Silicon Valley market say they believe there are enough customers to support the new supply.

Analysts: Demand Can Absorb New Supply
“Demand for multi-tenant data center space in Silicon Valley during 2010 is expected to grow by approximately 13 percent, while supply is anticipated to increase by approximately seven percent,” said Jason Schafer, Senior Datacenter Analyst for Tier1 Research. “Those providers that are able to expand, and in turn support their customer growth, will be well positioned to capture significant market share in the future.”

Fortune has been one of the beneficiaries of the phenomenal growth of social networking.  The first phase of the data center is fully leased to two tenants. Fortune doesn’t identify its customers, but industry sources have identified the tenants as Facebook and NTT America, which provides hosting services for Twitter.

Fortune’s 78,000 square foot facility has earned a Gold LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The company says it is operating at a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.38.

Energy Efficiency Features
The Fortune data center is housed in a former Seagate fabrication facility, which was already equipped with 8 megawatts of power capacity, a 100,000 gallon water storage tank, and a seismic isolation system.

Fortune Data Centers’ energy efficiency features include a design that uses a slab floor and drops cool air into the data center from above, taking advantage of the natural tendency for denser cool air to fall while warm air rises. Sheputis said this approach is more efficient than raised-floor designs, which require energy to pump the cold air under the flooring and up into the data center.

Fortune’s air handlers are housed on the upper floor of its facility, and feature variable speed drives to provide granular control of air pressure. Cooling is delivered into the data center through the ceiling, directly into a cold aisle containment system created by vinyl curtains between the top of the racks and the ceiling, preventing warm air from mixing back in with cool air for the servers.

“We continue to learn and improve,” said Sheputis. “The expansion capacity will be even more energy efficient.”

BAIS completed the frist phase of the colocation facility in 2009 and in May began work on Phase II of the facility, which now has 10 MW of critical backup power capacity served by two 9 megawatt 12KV feeders from Silicon Valley Power.

The site, which was awarded the Silicon Valley Power Energy Innovator Award for its energy efficient technologies and architecture, features an innovative economizer design. One end of the data center is lined with more than 200 fans to bring fresh air into an exterior “air corridor” that surrounds the data center. The air is then filtered and used in the facility’s cooling system. BAIS expects to be able to use the air economizers to provide free cooling for 85 percent of the year. The free cooling strategy, coupled with cold aisle containment, increased the energy efficiency of the facility, thus earning it a $750,000 energy rebate from Silicon Valley Power, which is the maximum available.

“BAIS is very proud to have been able to complete the development of its Phase II data center in such a short period and be able to accommodate the power and cooling requirements of this valued customer. BAIS was able to accomplish this increase in high-density power, because the site was designed and architected to accommodate incremental growth,” said Tom Wye, BAIS president and CEO. “We have an additional 9 Megawatt 12KV feeder installed, which we will activate in our Phase III extension.”

“We also just completed our SAS70 Type II audit, which amplifies our commitment to excellence in customer service and continued effort to offer a world class facility with industry’s highest standard in operation and management to our customers,” said Wye.

This video below gives a closer look at the BAIS data center. It was produced by Emerson Network Power and features its products, but also provides an inside look at an interesting new facility in the active Silicon Valley market. This video tour runs about 6 minutes 30 seconds.